Wednesday, October 9
Chicago Tribune | Apathy in online educationI wanted to afford her the freedom and flexibility that people take online courses for , so I acceded to her petition for a change. Later, I had to become a detective, spending hours copying excerpts from her paper into cheater catching software programs and search engines to verify that it was authentic. When I had proof that it was not, which happens about 30 to 40 percent of the time, I failed the student in a mixture of anger and pleasure. I copied the lines from the stolen work and pasted them in bold format, adjacent to the paragraphs in her "own" paper. When I sent her the F along with the evidence, I felt pleasure for nabbing a criminal; anger for her having wasted both our time. She pled ignorance, begged for another chance, swore she learned her lesson, even apologized. But I didn't care. I didn't see her face, hear her voice, feel her anguish in person. All I saw were the bold sections of pilfered text.
